|
Although the English conditional sentences are taught from the lower levels in Malagasy secondary schools, still many Malagasy students in “première” and “terminale” classes are not able to use them communicatively. The topic of this research work being “ Promoting Communicative Grammar to Improve the Teaching of Conditional sentences in “Première” and “Terminale” Classes” aimed at suggesting communicative grammar teaching as an improvement of students’ understanding of English conditional sentences, more precisely their use in real life situations.
In the first part of this work, we have considered the theories on which our topic is based. The main task consists of literature review which aims at finding out information about English conditional sentences and the communicative teaching of English conditional sentences. Since our goal is to achieve a better fit between grammar and communication, this first part helps us realize that communicative grammar teaching is of paramount importance because it broadens students’ mind to use grammatical rules for communicative purpose both in written and oral form, as many specialists affirm in their theories. The theoretical framework of this study shows the importance of integrating language skills in the teaching of grammar, namely conditional sentences, because communicative grammar implies communicative activities, and communicative activities come of the integration of skills.
We decided to meet the teachers at lycées to gather factual information about the actual teaching of conditional sentences in “première” and “terminale” classes. That is why the second part of this study is composed of the data collected from our field investigation. The investigation was carried out through a questionnaire survey and classroom observations. The collected data helped us a great deal to know what occurs in the classroom during courses on conditionals. In other words, this second part is a reflection of the teaching of grammar in Malagasy lycées. As a result, we noticed that in some classes, teachers use techniques and activities which only develops students’ grammatical competence but does not prepare them to the real world communication when using the grammatical rules they have learnt.
We did not stop our research work on reporting the actual teaching of conditional sentences in Malagasy lycées because our aim is to bring improvement upon it. As such, the third part consists in experimenting on a few lesson plans in order to know how much the
theories we developed in part one contribute to the improvement of the teaching and learning of conditional sentences so as to provide the students with real life situations and to develop their communicative competence in using conditional sentences in realistic contexts and situations. The experimentations taught us that it is very important to find communicative activities when we teach conditional sentences in order to reach the objective of this dissertation. In the second subpart of the third part, teaching suggestions about the teaching of grammar were given as well as some do and don’ts about the teaching of conditional sentences, and some tips on the use of communicative activities in grammar classes. Although they are short, we hope that they will be helpful for teachers of English who will read this dissertation.
In a word, we conclude that many teachers in Malagasy lycées do not teach conditional sentences communicatively. As a result, it is not surprising if the students forget their lesson easily and are not able to relate their thoughts properly when they should use conditionals. This research has been conducted in order to help teachers and future teachers to find ways to improve the teaching of conditional sentences in “première” and “terminale” classes. In spite of some imperfections, the lesson plans that have been experimented were proved to be effective as they really helped us with everything we taught. As such, we suggest that teachers should always teach conditional sentences communicatively by showing the use of the grammatical structures in real life situations and by involving the students in communication during the lesson procedures. We hope that this research will lead future researchers to make further investigations on the communicative teaching of other grammatical points to Malagasy students. For example, an important research subject could be on finding the “best way” to teach some English verb tenses communicatively.
REFERENCES AND RESOURCES
Berns, M.S. Functional Approaches to Language and Language Teaching: Another Look. In S. Savignon & M. S Berns (Eds), Initiatives in Communicative Language Teaching. A book of Readings. Reading, P.A: Addison-Wesley, 1984.
Celce-Murcia, M. and Larsen-Freeman, D. The Grammar Book, an ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course. 2nd edition, Newbury House: Heinle & Heinle, 1999.
Crystal, D. Rediscover Grammar, 3rd edition, Pearson Longman, 2004.
Cunningsworth, A. (1984), Evaluating and Selecting EFL Teaching Materials.
London: Heinemann, 2004.
Doff, A. A Training Course for Teachers. Cambridge University Press in association with the British Council, 1990.
Ellis, R. Becoming Grammatical. Pearson Education, 1997. Available in
http://www.impactseries.com/grammar/becoming.html,
Erlandson, D. A.; Harris, E. L.; Skipper, B. L. & Allen, S. D. Doing Naturalistic Inquiry : A Guide to Methods. Newbury Park, C.A: Sage, 1993.
Garner, B. Garner’s Modern American Usage, 3rd edition. Oxford Dictionaries
Online, 2009.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
